Never good enough
by Birdgirl204
Summary: Quil loves Claire with everything that he is, but that's not good enough for him. Every time he thinks that he's let her down, it hurts him more than the rest of the pack could ever imagine. QxC. QPOV.
1. The imprint

There's a possibility that this should be rated "M", but it depends on one's standpoints of violence

**There's a possibility that this should be rated "M", but it depends on one's standpoints of violence. If self-harm is a trigger for you, you may not want to read this. As a former cutter, I hope that our dear friend's reasoning is adequate and understandable. My name is Stephanie Meyer and Albus Dumbledore is straight.**

_I could barely see. Oh, my eyes and the light were fine, but all that I could see was staring right back at me. Like a porcelain doll, the child was meant to be beautiful. _

I tore the page from my notebook and crumpled it – no use writing about _that_ as my favorite memory. I paused, remembering the rest.

_She was beautiful – warm, walnut skin and eyes to match, smooth black hair put up on the top of her head like a fountain – tied with a green ribbon. Green would be my favorite color for years to come. Her tiny hands reached out to me and instinctively I reached a finger out towards her. She wrapped her fingers around mine, and I was elated. I felt my adrenaline rush, and a smile beginning to form, but there's nothing else of what I felt right then that I could possibly describe. Still staring into her eyes, I mumbled, "she's beautiful". I heard Sam break off his conversation with Claire's father, saw him turn to me from a distance._

_"Quil?"_

_I heard him as if through a window. _

_"Quil!"_

_And suddenly he was kneeling beside me, and the back of my head tingled - healing the bruise that Sam's slap would have left, had I been human. _

_"Quil, did you just . . . "_

_I turned my head to look at him, but my eyes didn't seem to want to leave Claire's face._

_"I can't believe it. EMILY!"_

_"Sam? Is it a – oh. How're you going to explain this without making him look like a pedophile?"_

_At "pedophile" I finally managed to look at Sam. "I'm not a pedophile. I'd __never__ forgive myself if I hurt her."_

_"Good. Then you can explain it to Zach and Mandi."_

_"How could they think I would hurt her? Who couldn't possibly love her? I mean - " I put my free hand on her face "- she's so perfect . . . . "_

Most of the rest of it was a blur. Taha Aki and the third wife; just your typical imprint story. Turns out Emily and Mandi's parents had divorced when they were young, and their mother had remarried – still was – so Mandi understood the whole "true love" concept better than Zach did. I think Zach was ok using me as a nanny, but a teenage boy who turns into a giant wolf loving his toddler really seemed to bother him. He went with what Mandi said, though, and it had been ten amazing years with my little Claire.

**This is my first fanfic, but I really don't care what you say about it. I'm used to peer editing, so nobody's under any obligation to be nice. Honest, don't worry about saying whatever you want. Maybe the next chapter'll be up by the 5th; I'm a college kid with hardly any free time. Oh, and I know that Quil doing what the story's about isn't Quil-esque, but ya gotta love guys who acknowledge their emotions...**


	2. After the imprint

**I am Steph Meyer and Paul has a kitten of whom he is more fond than Rachel. He loves cats and hates all canines. **

Actually, Claire'd taken to reprimanding me lately for calling her "little" – "Quil, I'm in junior high! I'm not little!" – at which point I'd kneel down next to her and swipe my hand over first my head, then hers. That usually got a giggle out of her. I'm still a few inches taller than her like that, thank god. I don't ever want there to be a day when I can't call her little, because physically she always will be, and right now we're still in the best friends / siblings stage. I mean, not that I mind at all; if Claire was happy, I was happy, too. Really, if she was a closet transsexual and wanted to marry a camel, I'd support whatever she did as long as she was happy. Because I've never heard just _what_ fate dictated "together" to mean, it could mean that I was to visit her every day and clean out the camel's stall.

As it was, Claire and I still had a pretty fantastic relationship after ten years. I guess most people would have gotten pissed a long, long time ago if they spent as much time with a kid that wasn't theirs, as I spent with Claire. I mean, yeah, we'd had our spats – when we first met she wouldn't eat Cheerios with milk on them, despite the added nutritional value (she only spat about that one a few times before I got the picture and left them – and my face - dry). When she started first grade she was mad when I wouldn't be a Homeroom Mother. At age nine I tried for days, but failed, to convince her that Barbie could go faster in her Dream Car than on Skipper's horse. And on her first day of eighth grade she'd wanted to start taking the bus to school with her friends. That one hadn't quite been a spat, but I still worried about her like crazy, even after almost three weeks.

After we'd first met, none of the pack or her parents had really kept any of the legends or werewolf stuff from her. So she knew, of course, that I loved her, and she always told me that she loved me too, but really, she's twelve – how much about love could a twelve year old really comprehend? It had been so long since I'd been twelve that I could hardly remember it. I was around her about as much as her parents were, so I figured it was only logical that she felt the same about me as she did them.

_lalelalelathisisjustadividinglinefanfickeptgettinridofmyunderscoresabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyandznexttimewontyoueithersingwithorsubmitareviewformetheend!_

All that I had to hand in the next morning was a paragraph about my high school graduation. With Claire back in school and taking the bus, I had about 8 hours of free time each morning, and Embry'd already gotten sick of me, I guess – he'd pushed me into taking some "intro to liberal arts" class at the local community college with Leah. Speaking of Leah . . .

"So, what did you write about?" she said, coming up behind me.

"High school graduation. You?"

"Oh, not about Claire? Why, does she have a boooooyfriend?" I punched her in the arm, but she continued as if nothing had happened. "Actually, I wrote about the day Jacob finally stood up to Sam and I could leave the pack. Of course, all I could use was "friends", but it was still a major turning point . . . ." She trailed off, and looked thoughtful. "Speaking of Sam, actually, I think we should head over to his and Em's place after class – I've heard some rumors about Jake coming back."

"Jake's coming back? But the Cullens, and-" She shoved her hand over my mouth. "Shut up, dog," she said, her eyes twinkling, "I'll tell you on the way. You ran, right?" I nodded and shoved her hand off of my mouth. Turning to face the front, I noticed a few of the students – because they mostly were all 18 or so – staring at us, and I blushed, at least as much as a wolf can. "Whatever", I mumbled, as I stood up and pushed past her to turn in my bullshitted "favorite memory".


	3. Class and Leah's driving

**If I owned rights to anything, one of the wolves would be mine. And **_**The Host**_** would have had some gay lovin' in it. I do not own stock in Eggo. Papa Guido is my own stereotypical creation.**

Class. Was. Hell.  
Well. I guess I shouldn't say that, seeing as I was hardly paying attention as it was. But really, 90 minutes listening to yet another guest speaker ramble on about something that I could hardly care less about, was just not something that I could pull off today. As class was starting I was still thinking about Jake – it'd been years since any of the pack had seen him – he'd gone off to Dartmouth with the leeches about 8 years ago, and they'd stayed clear of the area. So that we could grow up, supposedly, but it wasn't like many of us who hadn't imprinted would really leave the 'wolf behind, anyway.  
And then I started thinking about Claire.  
Oh, my Claire, my beautiful, sweet Claire. I couldn't believe how much she'd grown up since I'd first met her, that she would be in high school in a year, that she was everything I could ever remember wanting. Oh, my Claire . . . I loved to think about her . . . apparently to the extent that I completely missed class ending, until Leah smacked me upside the back of the head . . . damned werewolf healing powers.

"Wow, Leah, what's the occasion for _this_?" I asked as Leah walked out of Papa Guido's with a stack of pizzas.

"No reason for us to eat Sam and Emily and the kids out of house and home now that some of us have jobs, is there? I mean, ten years ago it was a different story, but it's not like they can practically afford 15 kids. I'm surprised you haven't heard any of this from Zach or Mandi, dog." She stressed "dog" as she pealed out of the parking lot.

"Jesus, could you please stop calling me that . . . bitch?" – she snarled – "As a matter of fact, Zach and Mandi seem to think that the occasional meal is good pay for constant nannying, chauffering, and housework. And I _do_ have a job, but Sam never mentions anybody bringing food. Besides, Emily likes to cook."

"And when you and Claire settle down? Are you really going to subject her to a life of frozen waffles and Easy Mac?"

"Hey, those just happen to be some of her favorite foods. And you know I'll make whatever she wants me to, whenever she wants me to."

"Whatever, Quil. If you guys want to buy out Eggo, be my guest."  
I looked out the window, sulking. "So what's the deal with Jake, anyway?"

"Christ, you'll find out when we get there. And I only know 'cause I was in his pack, anyway. Just wait until he can tell you himse - ah, shit."

"What? He's back?"

But Leah would only shake her head, and I couldn't get another word out of her the rest of the way to Sam and Emily's.

**Sorry for the delay - just found this when I was going through old documents, added on a few sentences, and voila! I figured this was better than nothing.**


End file.
